coffee pot and chocolate baroque

Hello Lovelies! How are you today? Have you had any snow? We had a surprise fall of snow yesterday - the first of the year. In fact the first of the winter. The girls enjoyed it.

Bless them! They did have fun!

I had fun today at coffee pot - I took along my spectrum noir pencils and the latest year of stamping stamp from Chocolate Baroque. We had a lovely time colouring in!

Here's my make from the session so you can see the beautiful stamp:

I love it to bits!!! 

Here's hoping you are okay!

Big hugs to you.

Rachel x

Its anything goes at Imagination Crafts

Morning all! Well its the 1st March - how did that happen? Another month gone - I hope this one improves again! Its time for a new challenge over at the Imagination Crafts Challenge blog. Its Anything goes as always but to be in with a chance to win the prize you need to use one or more of their products. This month I've made a garden sign:

I've used the following Imagination Crafts goodies in the making of this:

stencils classics bird-feeder

stencils/backgrounds-honeycombe

sparkle-medium-antique-bronze

sparkle-medium-bright-copper

sparkle-medium-forest-green

mdf-paint-limestone

crackle-medium

I'll be hanging this out in the garden soon - it was inspired by my lovely new bird feeder in the garden.

Why not join us here!

Thanks for your lovely comments from yesterday - you are very kind - here's what we did yesterday - well what Lucy did:

white chocolate and raspberry cake - first cake made wholly by herself - didn't she do well! I did have to hover and advise but that was it! And it tasted fab! Well done Lucy!!!!

Hope you have a great Sunday!

Big Hugs

Rachel xx

Poinsettias at christmas card club

Hello lovelies! How are you! I hope you are well and happy and if not sending you hugs to try to help. Well the belly dancing was interesting!!! No pictures Diane - don't want to frighten you all - lol!!!! No - it was good fun - we got to wear those scarves around our waists with metal bits that jangle when you shimmy - so yes it was funny!!!!! I may go again - but it depends if I'm aching around the belly area later!

So today I have a trio of cards to show you for the latest Christmas Card Club topic which is Poinsettias. My stamps are a combination of Card-io and Chocolate Baroque.

Just one design this time - three makes! I enjoyed this one!

I used distress evergreen bough to do the background and overstamped with Card-io stamps using cranberry, bottle and expresso adirondack inks. The verse/story and sentiment were stamped with versafine - the poinsettia was stamped with versafine then painted with adirondack cranberry and bottle.

Just wanted to show you the gecko I painted whilst at centre parks too:

Have a great day!!!!

Hugs

Rachel xx

More Bokeh!

Well hello there! How are you? I'm good and have had a good couple of days - I tried a new class today too - body balance - its a mix of yoga and tai chi and was very good! I'm having a bit of a giggle tomorrow - I've signed up for a belly dancing class! I'll let you know how that one goes!

Today I've got my good friend Sandy's birthday card to share with you - I'm pretty sure she doesn't look at my blog so here it is:

Here's a close up:

Its that bokeh look again done using Jo's bubbles stencil and distress inks - mowed lawn, shabby shutters and cracked pistachio plus white brilliance ink. I have also used chocolate baroque stamps plus a TH one too! I used glossy accents on the butterflies after faux bleaching them!

Big hugs to you all! Have a great evening!

Hugs

Rachel xx

swap card

Hello lovelies! How are you today? I hope you are doing fine! I've been having quite a bit of exercise since I last blogged. I did a 4 mile run last night then swam 50 lengths this morning! All good - and I have yoga and more running on the agenda for tomorrow. It all helps! Keeping busy and exercise are definitely good for the soul. I needed it after visiting the University on Monday - we (me and Bez) cleared Shauns office of his personal effects. Not an easy task but at least it is done - everyone was very kind and sensitive but I still found the whole thing very difficult! We also talked about how to honour Shauns' memory - more of that in the future but it all sounds good to me!

Okay so today I have a card to show you made with the Chocolate Baroque colour challenge in mind. Its also for the Joanna Sheen card swap this month - the theme is hearts and flowers. The chocolate baroque colour challenge is here:



Here's what I did:

I've used distress inks dusty concorde, shaded lilac, spiced marmalade and scattered straw. I made the background directly on the card using all four colours then did  2 more loose backgrounds using just the purples and just the oranges. Then I used these to stamp on and fussy cut the images to add to the base card.

I would like to enter this into chocolatebaroquechallenge-8. 

Big hugs to you all - and I hope you've had a good day!

Rachel xx

Journal page

Evening all! I hope you are well and happy. Thanks for your kind comments on yesterdays post - we truely did have a lovely time on holidays and my day at Clarity Cumbria was fabulous. Today it was world thinking day so we went down to service at the church then we had a roller disco at a local sports hall - I think the girls enjoyed it and thankfully there weren't any broken bones!

I wanted to show you my journal page from last night - but before I do here's the card that inspired the technical side of the page.

So its the Bokeh technique - I used faded jeans, ripe persimmon and cracked pistachio distress inks plus  plus Jo's bubble stencil and then added the white circles in white brilliance ink. I used exactly the same idea on the journal page - the theme for this was Chinese New Year - its now the year of the goat - I found out that 1967 was also the year of the goat so I decided to make the page for Shaun:

All the words in the circle came from information on goats personality traits - it seems that they all fit Shaun so well. I used abandoned coral, cracked pistachio, peacock feathers and picked raspberry this time in distress inks - love the new abandoned coral - so very pretty! The stamps are all Clarity Wee Folk. 

Hope you like my interpretation of the theme - a bit lateral I know but thats what happened! 

I'd like to enter this into pinkleart sunday-stamper-week-346-new-moon-on - abandoned coral is my new!!!

Big Hugs

Rachel xx

Clarity Cumbria

Hello Lovelies! Well we're back from our hollibobs - it was truely a fabulous few days - I officially love Center Parcs - we're hoping to go again when my sister visits in September - she lives in New Zealand and we rarely get to see her! Anyway here's a few holiday snaps:

Lucy and Penny both enjoyed the climbing wall!

And the bikes ....

Lucy loved the treetop trek! It was an all round fabulous experience! Loved it!

Today I had a fabulous day at Clarity Cumbria - thanks to Jo Rice for a wonderful day. Here are the makes we made:

It was a fabulous workshop - I loved it but the third card using the Bokeh technique is my favourite make - I did my next journal page using the technique when I got home. You can see that soon!

Thankyou so much for all your support whilst we were away and for the well wishes for Penny's birthday - thanks Sylvie for the card also! She loved it!

Big Hugs to you!

Rachel xx